The demon’s voice grew quieter as its anger intensified, but sharper and somehow all the more dangerous. Feeling delirious, the sound of it reminded Constans of his little knife. “You betray me for the final time, boy. I will devour you slowly in this world, then claim your spirit in the next and begin anew. How I will smile as I wear your brother’s body, as I rip your flesh with his hands!”
Now Constans looked up sharply, right into the demon’s terrible, eyeless face, with unwavering hatred. He took a swift breath, drawing together every ounce of power and life he could still feel coiled deep in his tired body. The little blade flashed in his hands once, twice, biting deeper than he had ever gone before, forcing him to grit his teeth against the pain and stinging tears that threatened to come. He began to stand as he bled, chanting what he prayed were the right words through lips that seemed stiff already, and cold. If he died here tonight, he would die on his feet or… or die trying, he thought dimly, aware of a rapidly growing numbness.
The blood that flowed followed him as he rose. A vortex formed, slowly at first, a cyclone building around his body and that of the elf, their blood mingling and twisting into the forms that the magic required.
Surely the ancient authors of this ritual had never intended that the caster be the one to sacrifice himself, and it was becoming painfully clear that it would be too much. Despairing, he let himself believe for a moment that he would die with the spell unfinished, that to his shame this elf he had meant to spare by his sacrifice would die here as well, forgotten and untended… that the demon would go free. No, damn him! Constans pushed harder, the words curling from his tongue as the demon snarled and raged against him now without restraint. It ripped down the walls of its fragile prison rune by rune, each failing with a shrieking noise like torn metal.
The final protective rune shattered with a terrible rending sound, plunging the room into darkness as the raw power of the demon’s release exploded outward. Buffeted by the backlash of his own magic, the unstable power Constans attempted to control burst forth from him at once, sucking the breath from his lungs as both magic and blood were released from his body in a terrible burst. Knocked to the floor by the combined magics, his head bounced against the stone with a crack.
Constans lay still. The room lay still. Everything in the laboratory lay upended, scattered across the floor and against the walls, driven by the force for the blast. The mountain of detritus that concealed the space itself had crumbled in places, spilling down into the cluttered maze of the storeroom beyond.